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going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end." This is the truly tragic moment when the hero becomes conscious of his wretched condition. He does not have hope, but "there is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn." Acknowledging the truth will conquer it; Sisyphus, just like the absurd man, continues pushing. Camus claims that when
Sisyphus acknowledges the futility of his task and the certainty of his fate, he is freed to realize the absurdity of his situation and to reach a state of contented acceptance. With a nod to the similarly cursed
507:, Camus makes the connection between life as an eternal beginning obedient to the absurd and Sisyphus, hero of Greek mythology. Why such a punishment? Camus cites several versions of the myth, most of which explain Sisyphus' punishment by insulting the gods. A particular version lends to Sisyphus, dying, the will to feel the love of his wife by asking her not to give him a burial and to throw his body in the public square, after his death. According to another version, Sisyphus discovers the affair between the ruler of Olympus,
494:"I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."
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197:. The absurd lies in the juxtaposition between the fundamental human need to attribute meaning to life and the "unreasonable silence" of the universe in response. Camus claims that the realization of the absurd does not justify suicide, and instead requires "revolt". He then outlines several approaches to the absurd life. In the final chapter, Camus compares the absurdity of man's life with the situation of
450:. After finally capturing Sisyphus, the gods decided that his punishment would last for all eternity. He would have to push a rock up a mountain; upon reaching the top, the rock would roll down again, leaving Sisyphus to start over. Camus sees Sisyphus as the absurd hero who lives life to the fullest, hates death, and is condemned to a meaningless task.
245:, when millions of refugees fled from advancing German armies. While the essay rarely refers to this event, Robert Zaretsky argues that the event prompted his ideas of the absurd. He claims that both a banal event and something as intense as a German invasion will prompt someone to ask "why?" The essay was published in French in 1942.
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foreign, strange and inhuman place; true knowledge is impossible and rationality and science cannot explain the world: their stories ultimately end in meaningless abstractions, in metaphors. This is the absurd condition and "from the moment absurdity is recognized, it becomes a passion, the most harrowing of all."
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Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe now without a master seems to him neither sterile nor fertile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of this mountain full of night, alone forms a world. The struggle
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Here Camus explores the absurd creator or artist. Since explanation is impossible, absurd art is restricted to a description of the myriad experiences in the world. "If the world were clear, art would not exist." Absurd creation, of course, also must refrain from judging and from alluding to even
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For Camus, who sets out to take the absurd seriously and follow it to its final conclusions, these "leaps" cannot convince. Taking the absurd seriously means acknowledging the contradiction between the desire of human reason and the unreasonable world. Suicide, then, also must be rejected: without
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He begins by describing the following absurd condition: we build our life on the hope for tomorrow, yet tomorrow brings us closer to death and is the ultimate enemy; people live their lives as if they were not aware of the certainty of death. Once stripped of its common romanticism, the world is a
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Camus is interested in
Sisyphus's thoughts when marching down the mountain, to start anew. After the stone falls back down the mountain Camus states that "It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself! I see that man
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It is not the world that is absurd, nor human thought: the absurd arises when the human need to understand meets the unreasonableness of the world, when the "appetite for the absolute and for unity" meets "the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle."
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who was condemned to repeat forever the same meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll down again just as it nears the top. The essay concludes, "The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine
Sisyphus happy."
308:. All of these, he claims, commit "philosophical suicide" by reaching conclusions that contradict the original absurd position, either by abandoning reason and turning to God, as in the case of Kierkegaard and Shestov, or by elevating reason and ultimately arriving at ubiquitous
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River. In exchange for his revelation, he received a fountain for his citadel. His too-much insight irritates the gods who condemn him to push a rock to the top of a mountain, which inevitably rolls towards the valley before the hero's goal is achieved.
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loses interest to the absurd man, he gains freedom in a very concrete sense: no longer bound by hope for a better future or eternity, without a need to pursue life's purpose or to create meaning, "he enjoys a freedom with regard to common rules".
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man, the absurd cannot exist. The contradiction must be lived; reason and its limits must be acknowledged, without false hope. However, the absurd can never be permanently accepted: it requires constant confrontation, constant revolt.
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for modern lives spent working at futile jobs in factories and offices. "The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes
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Unlike the
Sisyphus usually presented in mythology, Camus considers that "one must imagine Sisyphus happy". Sisyphus finds happiness in the accomplishment of the task he undertakes and not in the meaning of this task.
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lives for ephemeral fame. "He demonstrates to what degree appearing creates being. In those three hours, he travels the whole course of the dead-end path that the man in the audience takes a lifetime to cover."
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who defied the gods and put Death in chains so that no human needed to die. When Death was eventually liberated and it came time for
Sisyphus himself to die, he concocted a deceit which let him escape from the
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was first published in 1955. Included in the translated version is a preface written by Camus while in Paris in 1955. Here Camus states that "even if one does not believe in God, suicide is not legitimate".
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To embrace the absurd implies embracing all that the unreasonable world has to offer. Without meaning in life, there is no scale of values. "What counts is not the best living but the most living."
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Camus undertakes the task of answering what he considers to be the only question of philosophy that matters: Does the realization of the meaninglessness and absurdity of life necessarily require
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of the time insinuated that he had "not read the authors he quotes". He nevertheless argues that happiness is about living one's life while being aware of its absurdity because
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has no need of rules... 'Everything is permitted,'... is not an outburst of relief or of joy, but rather a bitter acknowledgement of a fact."
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to affect and engage fully in human history. He chooses action over
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allows us to better control our existence. This attitude towards
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The Plague, The Fall, Exile and the
Kingdom, and Selected Essays
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Camus presents
Sisyphus's ceaseless and pointless toil as a
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A life worth living: Albert Camus and the quest for meaning
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For mythology regarding the Greek character
Sisyphus, see
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and is organized in four chapters and one appendix.
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661:"Why Albert Camus Remains Controversial".
241:Camus began the work in 1940, during the
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1146:Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism
801:The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
680:The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
181:. Influenced by philosophers such as
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1126:Resistance, Rebellion, and Death
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422:Chapter 4: The Myth of Sisyphus
668:. Retrieved 29 November 2019.
385:the slightest shadow of hope.
269:Chapter 1: An Absurd Reasoning
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1119:Reflections on the Guillotine
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261:The essay is dedicated to
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636:Zaretsky, Robert (2013).
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144:original French edition
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414:and his last novel,
218:The Misunderstanding
166:The Myth of Sisyphus
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483:Franz Kafka
298:Lev Shestov
221:(1942) and
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945:The Plague
738:9 December
733:Britannica
713:9 December
708:Sparknotes
596:References
542:Dostoevsky
468:Greek hero
448:underworld
263:Pascal Pia
66:Translator
1112:The Rebel
1014:The Guest
657:862746155
538:treatises
460:conscious
412:The Diary
366:conqueror
358:ephemeral
344:integrity
230:The Rebel
177:essay by
169:(French:
98:Published
92:Absurdism
1188:Nuptials
1050:Caligula
952:The Fall
846:(French)
568:See also
477:Appendix
455:metaphor
443:Sisyphus
431:Sisyphus
370:eternity
351:Don Juan
233:(1951).
224:Caligula
199:Sisyphus
84:Subjects
76:Language
20:Sisyphus
1219:Related
877:at the
776:Sources
562:Spinoza
548:, many
471:Oedipus
340:ethical
275:suicide
257:Summary
237:History
1096:Essays
929:Novels
826:
807:
792:
788:2004,
761:
686:
655:
647:
517:Asopus
513:Aegina
511:, and
489:Ending
437:, 1549
435:Titian
304:, and
195:absurd
189:, and
126:France
111:1955 (
104:1942 (
79:French
46:Author
1041:Plays
920:works
546:Kafka
142:185 (
139:Pages
134:Print
824:ISBN
805:ISBN
790:ISBN
759:ISBN
740:2019
715:2019
684:ISBN
653:OCLC
645:ISBN
624:2019
564:'s.
558:fate
544:and
509:Zeus
499:Myth
404:and
152:ISBN
588:by
462:."
433:by
398:,
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300:,
296:,
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